1478 Gyan Prakash
the subalterns had acted in history " on their own , that is , independently of the elite "; their politics constituted " an autonomous domain , for it neither originated from elite politics nor did its existence depend on the latter ." 8
While the focus on subordination has remained central to Subaltern Studies , the conception of subalternity has witnessed shifts and varied uses . Individual contributors to the volumes have also differed , not surprisingly , in their orientation . A shift in interests , focus , and theoretical grounds is also evident through the eight volumes of essays produced so far and several monographs by individual subalternists . 9 Yet what has remained consistent is the effort to rethink history from the perspective of the subaltern .
How the adoption of the subaltern ' s perspective aimed to undo the " spurious primacy assigned to them [ the elites ]" was not entirely clear in the first volume . The essays , ranging from agrarian history to the analysis of the relationship between peasants and nationalists , represented excellent though not novel scholarship . Although all the contributions attempted to highlight the lives and the historical presence of subaltern classes , neither the thorough and insightful research in social and economic history nor the critique of the Indian nationalist appropriation of peasant movements was new ; Marxist historians , in particular , had done both . L1 It was with the second volume that the novelty and insurgency of Subaltern Studies became clear .
The second volume made forthright claims about the subaltern subject and set about demonstrating how the agency of the subaltern in history had been denied by elite perspectives anchored in colonialist , nationalist , and or Marxist narratives . Arguing that these narratives had sought to represent the subaltern ' s consciousness and activity according to schemes that encoded elite dominance , Guha asserted that historiography had dealt with " the peasant rebel merely as an empirical person or member of a class , but not as an entity whose will and reason constituted the praxis called rebellion ."" Historians were apt to depict peasant rebellions as spontaneous eruptions that " break out like thunder storms , heave like earthquakes , spread like wildfires "; alternatively , they attributed rebellions as a reflex action to economic and political oppression . " Either way insurgency is regarded as external to the peasant ' s consciousness and Cause is made to stand in as a phantom surrogate for Reason , the logic of consciousness ." 12 How did historiography develop this blind spot ? Guha asked . In answering this
8 Ranajit Guha , " On Some Aspects of the Historiography of Colonial India ," Subaltern Studies I , 3-4 .
9 Subaltern Studies I-VI , Ranajit Guha , ed . ( Delhi , 1982-89 ); vol . VII , Gyanendra Pandey and Partha Chatterjee , eds . ( Delhi , 1992 ); vol . VIII , David Arnold and David Hardiman , eds . ( Delhi , 1993 ); Ranajit Guha , Elementary Aspects of Peasant Insurgency in Colonial India ( Delhi , 1983 ); Partha Chatterjee , Nationalist Thought and the Colonial World : A Derivative Discourse ?( London , 1986 ); and Chatterjee , The Nation and Its Fragments : Colonial and Postcolonial Histories ( Princeton , NJ ., 1993 ); Dipesh Chakrabarty , Rethinking Working-Class History : Bengal 1890-1940 ( Princeton , 1989 ); David Hardiman , The Coming of the Devi : Adivasi Assertion in Western India ( Delhi , 1987 ); and Gyanendra Pandey , The Construction of Communalism in Colonial North India ( Delhi , 1990 ).
10 See , for example , Majid Siddiqi , Agrarian Unrest in North India : The United Provinces , 1918-22
( Delhi , 1978 ); and Jairus Banaji , " Capitalist Domination and Small Peasantry : Deccan Districts in the Late Nineteenth Century ," Economic and Political Weekly , 12 , no . 33 ( 1977 ): 1375-44 .
" Ranajit Guha , " The Prose of Counter-Insurgency ," Subaltern Studies II ( Delhi , 1983 ), 2 .
12 Guha , " Prose of Counter-Insurgency ," 2-3 .
AMERICAN HISTORICAL REVIEW DECEMBER 1994